“We have been down similar roads before. Jewish Americans during the Red Scare, African Americans during the civil rights movement, and Japanese Americans during World War II are examples that readily spring to mind.”

The choice to invest in punitive systems instead of stabilizing and nourishing ones does not make our communities safer. A living wage, access to holistic health services and treatment, educational opportunity, and stable housing are more successful in reducing crime than more police or prisons.

NEW YORK – A couple of weeks ago ProPublica noted that 2017’s murder rate in New York City was down to 291, the lowest since the 1950s. That number is noteworthy in and of itself, but also because of the context in which it occurred:

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us? The constitutional theory is that we the people are the sovereigns, the state and federal officials only our agents. We who have the final word can speak softly or angrily. We can

BRONX, N.Y. — Though officers chalked his death up to a seizure during a drug arrest, a Bronx mother claims in court that her son died after being left handcuffed in a police van with the heat cranked up.

https://soundcloud.com/propublica/how-a-reporter-found-high-ranking-new-york-cops-were-making-millions-in-questionable-income
WNYC radio reporter Robert Lewis had been hounding New York Assistant Police Chief Edward Delatorre for weeks. He’d called. He’d emailed. He’d gone through the New York Public Affairs office. But he was getting nowhere

Ruddy Quezada, a 54-year-old man wrongfully convicted of a deadly drive-by shooting in 1993, has won a $4.5 million settlement from New York state, according to court papers.
Quezada spent 24 years in prison for murder before winning his freedom in 2015 when, after decades of failed appeals, the Brooklyn district attorney's office conceded that

Escalating a probe of the New York City Police Department, new criminal charges unveiled Tuesday accuse a former lieutenant, two former officers and an ex-Brooklyn prosecutor of feeding gun licenses to “cottage industry of parasitic profiteers.”